Andy Woodman has vowed to take Bromley “back to the drawing board” after a “lacklustre” first defeat of the 2025-26 League Two season.
Bromley saw their unbeaten start to the league campaign ended at Oldham after Mike Fondop headed in a 82nd-minute winner for the Latics, which left Woodman disappointed at how “lacklustre” his team were despite slipping to seventh but still in the play-off spots.
“Yeah it was a bit lacklustre wasn’t we?” reflected Woodman in his post-match interview on Bromley’s YouTube channel, as he felt that his team just failed to hit their usual gears in a rare off day on the pitch.
“Wasn’t quite couldn’t quite get going. Things weren’t dropping for us. Just it was a tough tough day. We just couldn’t get going. It wasn’t for trying and huffing and puffing. We just lacked a little bit of quality in certain moments.”
Woodman however rued a injury-time save from Oldham’s Matthew Hudson to deny Marcus Dinanga a late equaliser.
“That said we could have had a goal at the end. The keeper made an unbelievable save to keep them in front. Credit to Oldham to say it’s not an easy place to come and get a result here.
“It was the one goal that split the two teams up and it was a little dink into the box that we didn’t defend particularly well. So disappointment.”
Woodman ultimately felt during the game that they weren’t at their “silky” best as he explained that he instinctively didn’t feel a win was coming.
“I just didn’t feel it was going to fall for us today. It’s unlike me to feel like that with a team, you know, it’s not certainly not for effort and hard work and wanting but it’s just one of those days where I just didn’t feel we look silky in what we were doing or confident in what we were doing and back to the training ground and maybe get back on point with what we’re about.”
The 54-year-old however iterated that his priority is on ensuring that his Ravens bounce back at home to Chesterfield on 20 September, with a vow to go back to basics in terms of their tactics and style despite simply lacking “quality” at Oldham.
“I think that’s the key now. Look if we thought we were going to go right through the season, not get beat, you know we’d be crazy. But it’s how we react to it and me included in that, you know, how we react as a group of players,
“We got a tough month coming up because some big games. Um, and we got to make sure that we go back to the drawing board and go back to what we’re about. And I don’t think we come away from that today. We just lacked quality what we were trying to do.”
During the match, Jude Arthurs came on at half time alongside debutant, Lakyle Samuel which Woodman explained about down to the need to “just inject a little bit of energy in there really.”
Woodman proceeded to compliment Samuel for his performance in terms of touches and movement as a substitute on his first matchday appearance with the team.
“Yeah he did all right. He did okay. I mean it was its never easy coming in like that but he did well. He looked some nice touches, some nice movement, some good deliveries in the box. So yeah no problem.”